Merry Christmas!
Decided not to take today off to keep the Monday-Friday schedule going. I’ve found that a regular schedule really helps me to achieve consistency, for a number of reasons, including that my brain is weird that way.
Also, after some thinking, I’ve decided to lump the What I Blank sections into one larger Inputs section, since it was starting to stretch to force a Listen To in at times when it wasn’t as prevalent or notable. Instead, you’re getting 3 or so Inputs, from various sensory sources.
Inputs
1: Spent some time last night skeeting1I don’t like it either, but that’s what the community has decided to call the Bluesky version of tweeting, so, that’s what you get. through my favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. It’s a yearly tradition of my own making which I moved over to Bluesky this year after the general fall and crumbling of Twitter.
Feel free to give that thread a readthrough if you’d like my general thoughts. Also because I can’t imbed Bluesky messages here yet, I don’t think. Plus, Bluesky hasn’t reinvented threading yet.
2: Watched the new ep of Summoning Salt’s speedrunning series on The History of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out World Records. Speedrunning is one of those weird internet things that was sort of a thing in an analog world, but became a much larger community and constituency with the advent of live-streaming, recording, and digital interactivity. A high score on a physical machine was a bragging right in one arcade or pizza parlor. A high score in the networked era is a constant fight for ephemeral renown.
Speedrunning has grown to encompass multiple yearly conventions that raise millions for charities, research and expose hundreds of interesting faults and cracks in video games, and bring lasting life to games released decades ago. We’ve come a long way from Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell.
3: Ended up making a Beef Wellington for Christmas dinner again this year. Last year was definitely a better effort, but I can recommend the method from Joshua Weissman’s video. It’s a recipe that seems daunting in name but really comes down to proper mise and some small, stepped preparations that result in a day-of cooking experience that only involves some egg wash, some flaky salt, and some time in the oven. Just be sure to have a proper thermometer, and be sure you’re buying actual prosciutto and not, as somebody managed to, prosciutto-wrapped mozzarella sticks.2Me. That someone was me. It was not pretty.
Projects In Progress
Not a lot of progress today on things, outside some general reading and learning of tangential things. I did do a bit of noodling on some various stories I’ve been collecting notes for, with some plot points that might help things flesh themselves out into actual stories and not just interesting ideas without movement.
One of the things I need to get better at is the development of characters who live naturally in stories I’m looking to tell. Developing the people who are the engines of plots is something I generally struggle with at first, and improving there is one of the larger opportunities I see in myself and my growth as a fiction writer.
Notes:
- 1I don’t like it either, but that’s what the community has decided to call the Bluesky version of tweeting, so, that’s what you get.
- 2Me. That someone was me. It was not pretty.